I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to signaling discontinuous transmission (DTX) via an uplink control channel in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data can be provided via such wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power, . . . ). For instance, a system can use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and others.
Generally, wireless multiple-access communication systems can simultaneously support communication for multiple access terminals. Each access terminal can communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from base stations to access terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from access terminals to base stations. This communication link can be established via a single-in-single-out, multiple-in-single-out or a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system.
MIMO systems commonly employ multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas can be decomposed into NS independent channels, which can be referred to as spatial channels, where NS≦{NT,NR}. Each of the NS independent channels corresponds to a dimension. Moreover, MIMO systems can provide improved performance (e.g., increased spectral efficiency, higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
MIMO systems can support various duplexing techniques to divide forward and reverse link communications over a common physical medium. For instance, frequency division duplex (FDD) systems can utilize disparate frequency regions for forward and reverse link communications. Further, in time division duplex (TDD) systems, forward and reverse link communications can employ a common frequency region so that the reciprocity principle allows estimation of the forward link channel from reverse link channel.
Wireless communication systems oftentimes employ one or more base stations that provide a coverage area. A typical base station can transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream may be a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to an access terminal. An access terminal within the coverage area of such base station can be employed to receive one, more than one, or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, an access terminal can transmit data to the base station or another access terminal.
An access terminal can evaluate quality of a wireless communication channel. For instance, the access terminal can yield a measure of channel quality such as a Channel Quality Indicator (CQI), which can be reported to a base station via an uplink channel. Moreover, information can be sent from the base station via a downlink control channel and/or a downlink data channel intended for the access terminal. The access terminal can affirm or deny detection of information transferred over the downlink data channel by sending an Acknowledge character (ACK) or a Negative-Acknowledge character (NAK) to the base station. Oftentimes, CQI information and ACK/NAK information can be multiplexed in a common uplink control channel subframe by the access terminal. Conventional techniques where CQI information and ACK/NAK information is multiplexed in the same uplink control channel subframe, however, typically fail to allow the access terminal to distinguish between errors decoding information sent over the downlink data channel versus information sent over the downlink control channel when reporting to the base station. Accordingly, the base station can be unable to identify whether the access terminal failed to decode information transferred via the downlink data channel and/or information transmitted via the downlink control channel.